Partner with indirect resellers in the Cloud Solution Provider program
Appropriate roles: Global admin | Sales agent
With such a complex and rapidly changing technology marketplace, customers want the competitive edge that technology solutions can give them. In such a climate, it makes sense for partners to invest in partner-to-partner engagements to extend offerings and enable customers to do even more.
New resellers are entering the market and seeking ways to offer their solutions to customers outside of their markets and locales. As an established technology provider, you're well positioned to be their route to market. Engage with indirect resellers in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program to connect with other partners, bring new solutions to the market, and advance customers' adoption of cloud services.
In the indirect provider-reseller (two-tier) model, you work with indirect resellers to offer Microsoft cloud solutions to customers. You purchase products and subscriptions directly from Microsoft and then offer these solutions to customers through your resellers.
As an indirect provider, you use the Partner Center to:
Connect with indirect resellers who can help expand your reach and customer base
Establish partnerships with indirect resellers that allow you both to serve common customers
Designate indirect resellers to manage specific customers and subscriptions
Manage your relationships with Microsoft, customers, and indirect resellers all in one place
For information on what's required to participate in the CSP program as an indirect reseller, see Get started as an indirect reseller on the Microsoft Partner Network website.
Indirect provider tasks in the Partner Center
Complete the following steps to establish and manage your partnership with indirect resellers and customers. Steps 2 and 3 are described in more detail below.
Review your company's profile on Microsoft's official indirect providers list.
- To make changes to your company's indirect provider profile, contact your Microsoft representative.
Connect with indirect resellers
- Before you can interact and transact with resellers, you must establish partnerships with them in the Partner Center.
Connect with customers
Associate new customers and subscriptions to resellers
Establish reseller relationships with existing customers
After you complete these steps, you can manage your reseller partnerships on the Indirect resellers page from your Partner Center menu.
Important
Before you can start working with resellers, they must be enrolled as indirect resellers in the CSP program and have Partner Center accounts. Point your resellers to Partner with indirect providers in CSP for information about enrolling in CSP.
Connect with indirect resellers
To interact and transact with indirect resellers in the Partner Center, you must establish a partnership with them. Having a partnership with an indirect reseller allows you and the reseller to both serve common customers.
To establish a partnership, email a partnership request to the reseller. Be sure to have the reseller's email address on hand before you get started.
On the subscription details page, in the Reseller (MPN ID) field, add the reseller you want to work with. Be sure to use the MPN ID associated with the reseller's Partner Location Account they used to onboard to Partner Center. This action ensures that the reseller will receive the appropriate incentives and they have an active Microsoft Partner Agreement to engage in the transaction.
Select Indirect resellers from your Partner Center menu.
On the Indirect resellers page, select Request a partnership. A draft email message appears.
Select Open in email to open the message in your default email application, or select Copy to clipboard to copy and then paste the message into an email. Select Done when finished.
Important
You can edit the text in the email message, but be sure to include the link as it is personalized for your Partner Center account.
After the reseller accepts your partnership request, they'll appear in your indirect resellers list, then you can:
Add new customers on their behalf
Submit orders on behalf of their customers
Associate them with a subscription so they can manage it on behalf of the customer who purchased it
Designate them as the customer's support contact for specific subscriptions
Depending on the level of access and involvement that you want the reseller to have, you may want to take one or more of the actions described below.
For existing subscriptions, if you decide to work with an indirect reseller, you can update the subscription details to include the indirect reseller.
- On the subscription details page, in the Reseller (MPN ID) field, add the reseller you want to work with. This action ensures that the reseller will receive the appropriate incentives.
| To accomplish this | Do this | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Enable the reseller to manage a customer's account and have administrator permissions to manage their subscriptions | Associate a reseller to a customer account when adding a new customer | On the New customer page |
| Enable the reseller to manage an Azure customer's account | Associate a reseller to an Azure customer account when adding a new customer | On the Azure service portal, select User Settings to give the indirect reseller tenant owner permissions |
| Give the reseller credit for incentives | Associate the reseller to the subscription (new or existing) | On the New subscription page |
| Delegate customer support for specific subscriptions to the reseller | Select the reseller from the Designated support contact list | On the subscription's detail page: Select the customer from your Customers page, then select the subscription from the customer's Subscriptions page |
Remove partnership with indirect resellers
To remove partnership with existing indirect reseller, follow the following steps.
From the Partner Center menu on the dashboard, select Indirect resellers.
On the Indirect resellers page, select Remove partnership. A message will appear that asks for confirmation. To proceed, select Yes.
Important
Customers associated to the indirect reseller will not be removed. Any delegated admin privileges granted will remain unchanged. You represent that the decision to discontinue your relationship with partner was made in good faith, for a legitimate business purpose, and in accordance with your agreement with your customer or partner, and you agree to defend and hold Microsoft harmless from and against any third-party claims to the contrary. You must provide legal notice of termination to your customer or partner if your agreement requires it. This tool does not generate notice to the customer or partner.
The indirect reseller whose partnership you removed won't appear in the list. Depending on the level of access and involvement, you may want to communicate to the indirect reseller and end customer about this change.
Connect with customers
When you get new customers, you need to create accounts for them in Partner Center. When you add a new customer account, you can designate a specific reseller to manage the account and administer the customers' subscriptions and services on their behalf.
When you associate a reseller with a new customer account, you're delegating account and subscription management to the reseller. This association means that the reseller has administrator access to the customer's subscriptions and services and can manage them on behalf of the customer.
Add new customers and associate them with indirect resellers
Select Indirect resellers from your Partner Center menu.
Find the indirect reseller that you want to assign new customers to and then select Add new customer. The indirect reseller is already selected for you on the customer detail form. Provide the customer's details and then select Next: Subscriptions.
On the New subscription page, select the subscriptions the customer wants to buy and then enter the number of licenses the customer needs.
Select Next: Review.
If the order is correct, select Submit. If the order is incorrect, select Cancel to cancel the entire operation and start over.
After you submit the order, the Confirmation page appears. Under Setup info, the admin user account name and temporary password are displayed. Copy down the user account name and password information so you can send it on to the new customer.
Important
Be sure to make a note of the user account name and password as you can't access this information again after you close this page.
Select Done. The new customer appears in your customer list, associated with the indirect reseller. The reseller now has admin access to the customer's account information and subscriptions and can manage the subscriptions on the customer's behalf.
Add new subscriptions to customer accounts
When customers want to buy new subscriptions, upgrade existing ones, or buy more licenses, you make these changes in the customer's account through the Microsoft 365 portal. You can't do this action in the Azure portal.
Select Customers from your Partner Center menu.
Find the customer whose account you want to change. You can filter the list by indirect reseller to narrow your choices. Expand the customer's record by selecting the down arrow, and then selecting Add subscription.
On the New subscription page, select the subscriptions and enter the number of licenses the customer wants to purchase.
To associate the subscription with a reseller, select the reseller's name from the list and then select Submit. Associating the reseller with the subscription enables them to earn incentives, if applicable.
The new subscriptions appear in the customer's subscriptions list.
If you want the reseller to handle customer support requests for the new subscription, select the subscription and then select the reseller from the Designated support contact list.
Select Submit when finished.
Next steps
Find answers to your questions about the Microsoft Partner Agreement
For more information about managing customer accounts and subscriptions, see: